But he didn’t seem inclined to shift from his beast form. Unlike the previous night, where he’d been a man and had spoken to me with a man’s voice and mind, this night he was so much the wolf that I worried the man had been lost completely.
Again, I suffered the thought that the horrible situation we found ourselves in was of my own making.
I knew I had magick. I’d seen my guardian’s own handwriting upon that wall, detailing all the things I could do. And all of it horrible.
I closed my eyes. What good could be worked from magick like that? Darkness and light could not coexist.
Or, could they?
As I searched my heart, I tried to stitch the fog of memories together, tried to make sense of the chaos. Surely, there’d been some good in me?
The only reason I thought that was because Ewan was good.
I’d given him every reason to hate me in the beginning, and yet he’d always come for me, to rescue me, to save me from my own wicked heart time and again. Didn’t it stand to reason that if something as good as him should do that, there had to be something within me worth saving?
I glanced down at his large, shaggy head, reached for his silky ebony fur, and ran my fingers through it.
His sigh vibrated right through me.
I smiled softly, feeling the press of the blade in my hidden pocket like a constant pricking at my heels. My fingers tingled with the need to grasp it, to hold it close.
But at that moment, the need wasn’t as strong or desperate. At that moment, I was able to simply pet him, be with him, imagine a happier time when he and I had surely been friends.
My heart warmed to the idea of us, he and I, smiling and laughing. Had we meant more to each other than that? I wasn’t certain of that yet, but when I poked at the blurry images, I could swear there had been so much more than what I’d seen so far.
Outside, the world continued to blow with wind and rain, but for some reason, the force of the gale didn’t feel near as violent as before.
The trees did not bow to the ground. They merely creaked and groaned but stood tall and erect. And the lightning that would usually explode all around us was gone as well. The clouds were gray, but lighter than they’d been. Even the wind smelled crisper, less like muck and more like possibility.
Inside this cave, even without the warmth of fire, I felt safe and protected.
I began talking to him, questioning all I’d learned and working through the riddle that remained.
“What is this place truly, Ewan? If we could only learn that, then surely we could figure out how to leave it for good.”
His eyes were closed, and he was breathing deeply, sleeping like the dead. My heart squeezed with something that felt an awful lot like tenderness.
But as the darkness gathered outside, as the gray clouds gave way to deep navy sky and the temperature turned frigid, I felt the gathering prickling of dark power twisting my thoughts.
The knife that I’d all but forgotten about was suddenly back in my hands, and my mind that had thought so clearly during the day grew dim and fuzzy. Though, unlike previous times, I didn’t completely black out.
I felt trapped in my own head as I felt myself move out from under him and stand up. My body was moving on muscle memory alone, even as my brain screamed for me not to do what I knew I was about to do.
I could see it all so clearly now, see the slashes cut deep into the trees as I wound my way slowly down the trail that would lead me to the one place I did not want to go.
I was an observer outside of myself and in agony because I knew that if I was being guided this way, then surely Ewan was too. Soon he would rise and follow me out here.
A tear squeezed out the corner of my eye as I arrived back at my tree and began to scale its rough bark.
I tried to stop myself, told myself to throw down the blade, to run away, to move. To bloody do something other than what I was about to do. But I was crouched low on the branch, peering straight ahead. I had no will at all, and this time, I knew exactly what I was about to do.
When he showed up less than an hour later, as I knew he would, and arrived at the spot he always did, I launched myself down at him, muttering the same stupid words as before.
I focused all my heart, all my thoughts on one thing—doing something other than sinking the blade into his heart.
Do it! I yelled in fury at myself. Do it! Move! Move, damn you!
And just before I reached him, I saw my hand move a fraction of an inch to the left. I screamed, but not with fury for the kill. Rather, in agony.
I felt as though I was being consumed by molten lava, as though I was being skinned alive. The dark forces were not happy that I’d done other than what I’d been enchanted to do.
Ewan, not in his mind, turned and sank his fangs into me. And this time, the pain was a relief. I did not stab him again. I held him to me, sobbing even as I felt my life leeching slowly out of me.
His attack was brutal, savage. He was the angry one this time. The darkness, unhappy with my performance, wreaked havoc on his mind. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did.
The evil would make me pay for disobeying it. Ewan ripped at my limbs, my stomach, and then finally, blessedly, my jugular.
I gasped as the colors spiraled away, leaving me alone in the darkness. Alone and cold.
But just before I gave up the ghost, I smiled because I’d won this fight, and tomorrow—if I came back that was—I’d do even better.
Eleven
Ewan
Back.
Again.
My mouth tasted of poison, and my head buzzed with brutal, horrific images of violence.
Sitting up, I groaned and held my head in my hands.
My stomach was full and bloated, making me feel nauseous. And then I was scrambling away on hands and knees as I felt my body give a violent heave.
I wretched for what felt like hours.
I moaned softly to myself as disjointed and terrible deeds floated in and out of my mind’s eye.
Then a soft, feminine hand landed on the small of my back, and I sobbed.
“Ewan,” she breathed, and I knew her instantly.
Turning into her body, I let her hold me. The previous day, my head had been nearly void of all human thought, but on this day, I could recall scattered bits, and I knew what I’d done to her, the violence I’d committed against her, the sheer perverse—
Her cold little hands framed my face, and blue eyes gazed tenderly into my own. “I know where your thoughts are tonight, my wolf. Do not let them be so. I had a theory about what’s been done to us, and last night I proved my theory correct.”
I wrapped my hands around her delicate wrists, wanting desperately to pull her to me. With each new day, I felt more of a pull toward her, harder, deeper, stronger. On this day, that pull was so overwhelming that it was nearly unbearable. I wanted to fall into her arms and never leave. I wanted to confess shocking things, tell her that I loved her, though I wasn’t sure I knew her well enough to say such things.
She smiled, eyes glimmering with tears, and my heart trembled.
We were in a hut. Not the hell we were forced to live in each night, but a home. And it was warm in here. Safe. No lightning, no thunder, no rains, no gray clouds, no pervasive darkness that controlled out thoughts and actions.
“Have we traveled again?” I asked with a gravelly burr.
She beamed at me, looking proud and tiny before me. Sitting on her knees, with her pale skin gleaming like milk in the moonlight, she practically glowed.
“You remember the travels, then? Yesterday, I’d feared I’d lost you.”
My brows lowered. I recalled the previous day with near perfect clarity, unlike any other day before it. Usually when we returned to whatever we returned to, the memories were transparent and thin, hard to hang on to for long.
But I remembered everything from the previous day—how she’d held me when we’d travelled through the funnel, the words I’d s
een written on the wall, speaking of her darkness, her own questions about why I’d never spoken to her of that darkness before. I was stronger that I had been on previous days, and I didn’t know why, other than it had to be because of her.
She had done something last night. She had done something, and I was being healed because of it.
“When I am the wolf, I can lose the man, especially if I spend too long in the mind of the beast. Violet,” I whispered. Her mouth parted into a tiny O, and I realized I hadn’t called her by that name since she and I had been banished, “are ye really here? I thought last night… I thought I’d killed ye.”
Her smile was as brilliant as the rays of the sun and warmed me through. “I’m here, Ewan. I’m here. The white flame is our friend. It is healing us, taking us through time and memories, showing us who we once were. I’m starting to remember everything.”
I swallowed. “What does this mean? For us?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t. But I am hopeful.”
I looked around at the walls again, frowning, overcome by the sensation that I’d been here before.
Then I saw a shadow move from the corner of the room. Past Violet sat up from her spot on a bed. My nostrils flared, and my heart trembled, as if my body knew before my brain did that something was about to happen, something that had changed the course of us forever.
My Violet reached down and clutched at my hand. Her fingers were cold and soft. I rumbled with approval at her touch. I felt grateful that she did not seem to hate me for the violence I’d committed against her last night.
“Ewan,” past Violet whispered in a husky drawl that made my skin shiver. She stared sightlessly at the wall right where we stood, but I knew it was not us she saw. “I’m sorry for the pain I caused you. I’m sorry that I made you the bad guy when you weren’t.”
“I’m sorry for a lot of things.” This was said not by past Violet, but by mine. When I turned to look at her, she had tears streaming unchecked down her face, and she was sniffing.
I took in a hard breath. “Ye are remembering, lass.”
She turned to me and nodded. “Yes, it’s like the instant I see these images, I regain it all, everything I lost. I remember this night, Ewan. Do you remember it as I do?”
There was such hope in her words, such desire that I should share in this moment with her. But my memories of this past were sketchy at best and completely wiped out at worst.
“The only things I can recall with any clarity are short at best, Violet. Memories aren’t what consumes me as much as the feelings the moments elicited in me.”
I looked back at her. Sadness tightened the corners of her mouth, and her wee nostrils flared.
I opened my arms to her, feeling desperate to fix the pain she was experiencing for her somehow, wishing I could have given her a better answer, wishing that I’d at least lied.
She moved into my arms easily, sighing as she rested her cheek upon my chest, and again, the sense of rightness consumed me.
“Being with you, lassie… it’s like the world makes sense to me again.”
Sensing movement beside us, I saw a wolf enter through the door, and past Violet gasped, looking wide-eyed and startled as the dark blur that had once been me padded in silently.
Its golden eyes flared with heat.
I stared in awe, not so much remembering, but aware in every fiber of my soul that this was the first night they’d made love.
We’d made love.
My fingers dug gently into her waist, as sensations of desire and need curled hot fingers through me.
I watched as the beast shifted to man and as past Violet welcomed him to her, looking softer than she ever had before, more accepting of her need for him. Right or wrong, she was no longer fighting the battle with herself to keep her heart’s desire at arm’s length.
The past Ewan laid her down upon the bed, covering her small, trembling body with his own.
And then they were making love. The room filled with the sound of their union. But it wasn’t just the sex that stirred my blood. It was the way past Violet looked at past me.
She was a creature of darkness, but no one could doubt her deep and unshakeable devotion to that shifter when they looked upon her flushed face and full smile.
They moved as one, he aware of her need and giving freely of himself, and she conscious of his as well. They were sitting on the edge of the bed, a ballet of limbs and sweaty forms writhing in tandem with each other. He would slide up, and she would push down.
The scent of their mating filled my head, and I felt my own body beginning to stir as blood rushed south.
My Violet issued a tiny moan, and she moved deeper into me, not repulsed by my body’s reaction to what it was we watched. Our breathing deepened, and then we were breathing not as individuals, but as one, inhaling and exhaling together.
Her soft, little hands slid down my back and over my arse, causing me to break out in a wash of goose pimples. I shivered and tightened my own hands at her waist.
We could not do anything here. But I knew that I wanted to. Desperately.
How had I gone from hating the witch to wanting nothing more than to be with her? And why did I feel as if we’d been together many, many times before? I could almost remember it.
The smell of us.
Woodsy and wild.
The taste of her.
Like sunshine and darkness.
“Oh gods,” my Violet whispered, “it was so good with you. It was always so good between us, Ewan.”
She looked up at me, eyes wide, full of longing and desire.
I nodded because I remembered that too.
“It was, lass. Ye were always the only one.”
She smiled and leaned up. I knew she meant to kiss me, and I knew that I should move, knew that this was sorcery at play here. For so long, though, my world had been gray, full of death and sorrow, and now there was light. Small, naught but a flicker of it, but it was pulling at me, and I was so tired of fighting.
So I stayed my ground and closed my eyes, waiting for that kiss.
Her lips touched mine, and I felt the mountains move, felt the world collapse in on itself, knew we’d been caught up in another funnel of time and shadows.
But neither of us pulled away. We nipped and sucked, laved our tongues hungrily over the others mouth, trying to crawl inside of one another.
“Oh, Ewan. My beast. My big, bad wolf,” she murmured, and I growled, growing consumed by a frenzy to have her.
I yanked her into my arms, forcing her to wrap her long legs around my waist and hang on. And then the dark funnel was back, pulling us in, but this time, it was gentle, and I didn’t care that we fell. We could fall for all eternity for all that the end of the world mattered to me.
I had her back.
I’d forgotten that I’d ever lost her.
But I had her back.
“My Red. My Little Red Hood,” I murmured, nipping greedily between words at her plump, red lips.
She sighed.
The only thing we were aware of next was rain. Gently falling rain, not the lashing violence of days gone by, but more like a cleansing, spring rain.
She laughed, still holding fast to me with her arms and legs, and looked around.
I, on the other hand, held on to her lush arse, curving my palms greedily over it and squeezing gently. My pulse hammered violently in my neck with the need, the all-consuming want. I almost didn’t care what memory we were in now, so long as we were together.
A bird chirped, and we both blinked, the fog of lust broken as we both looked up and our jaws dropped.
We were in hell again, but this wasn’t hell at all.
The world was verdant, there were birds wheeling through the air, and the trees were bursting with leaves and bright white blooms.
She turned to me with excitement glittering in her bright blue eyes. “Ewan, do you remember who I am?”
I grinned crookedly, lost in their glitt
ering depths. “Aye, yer my woman tonight, witch,” I growled and then nipped playfully at her bee-stung lips.
She laughed, and the winds rolled, not with madness, but with song. The blooms in the trees burst in a halo of wonder and rained down on us.
This was a different world, a beautiful one, bursting with hope and joy.
“Bed me tonight, Ewan. Until we can no longer remember who we are. Make me yours in all ways,” she whispered, and I nodded.
Throat so swollen with words that I could hardly breathe, I felt emotion brewing deep inside me, filling my body, my limbs, stretching me to the point of near bursting.
I walked toward the cave. It was not just my lair anymore, not a lonely place for me to shelter from the rains. It was a home now.
It was warm. And it was us.
I entered and set her gently on her heels. Her hands were graceful as she undid the hood tied at her neck and stripped off the scraps of fabric she’d called a dress.
Standing nude and glorious before me, her eyes were hot and branding as she looked her fill of me too.
Violet was glowing, literally glowing, as though she harbored a candle inside her. She gleamed from the inside out. At her feet, wildflowers were coming to glorious life.
She was darkness, but in this place, she was creating life.
Something had changed in her.
I reached for her at the same time she reached for me.
We were not gentle with each other. It was like everything we’d gone through and seen was coming out of us in a frenzy. Her hands clawed at my back, and I grunted even as I held her tight to me and dropped us as one to my knees. Then I gently and reverently laid her back.
She gazed up at me with hope and warmth shining on her face, and I wanted to whisper to her of my passion, my heart, and my desire for her, but I was too long denied of her and couldn’t stop from sliding into her heated warmth in one swift motion.
She cried out, arching up sweetly beneath me even as her legs wrapped tight around my waist to hold me fast to her.
My head grew dizzy at the feel of her snug heat wrapping me tight, and I groaned from deep inside my chest.